"Ulee's Gold"
                             A Film Review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                          WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL
                               July 26, 1997

     Victor Nunez is way up there near the top of my list of favorite film-
makers. So when I get a chance to see a new film by him--which doesn't
happen very often (this is his fourth feature film in 18 years)--I'm
there, whether it fits under my "women and film" rubric= or not. Actually,
I should have said that Nunez is one of my favorite feminist film makers,
since two of his films are among the most sensitive and insightful
portrayals of women I know--his 1979 film adaptation of Marjorie Kinnan
Rawlings's "Gal Young'un" and, even more so, his remarkable study of a
young woman finding herself, "Ruby in Paradise," made in 1994.

  So I figured, rightly as it turned out, that the women in "Ulee's Gold"
would be portrayed with a similar depth of understanding and compassion
even if the central figure in the film is a man, Ulee Jackson (played by
Peter Fonda).

     Another thing that makes Nunez special for Florida audiences is that he
is a Floridian whose films are set in his home state, but not in the
parts you'll find in the tourist brochures. It's clear that he has a
strong connection to the people and places in the "real Florida," which,
to quote a line in the film, is that part that's left if you draw a line
just above Orlando and let everything south of there drift off into     the
sea. Cinematographer Virgil Mirano lets his camera linger on drop-dead
beautiful scenes of the cypress swamps and canopy roads of the Panhandle
landscape, making me, at least, intensely nostalgic for that area where I
I used to own a little cabin in the woods.                              le

  This film is about a third generation bee keeper, Ulee Jackson, a sixty-
ish widower who lives a very quiet and isolated life in a rural
panhandle town, working alone setting out his bee hives, moving them
several times a year to different locations, harvesting and selling his
honey for a living. His pride is that in one short season of the year his
bees produce the rare tupelo honey, prized by connoisseurs but not very
much appreciated by most people, who can't tell one honey from another.

   During the Vietnam War Ulee was the lone survivor of his unit and his
grief and survivor's guilt have been hard on him.  His wife, who helped
him through his post war sense of despair, has died leaving him
emotionally devastated. So he turned off emotionally. He's a man who
doesn't socialize with other people, even old friends, who doesn't smile,
who never gives vent to his feelings--though Nunez and Fonda give us
glimpses of the feelings under the surface. Ulee does his duty. That
means he takes care of his bees and he takes care of, though he hardly
seems to care for, his two granddaughters, children of his son who is doing
time in jail for robbery, and daughter-in-law who left her kids and ran off
to Orlando where she's working as a waitress in a sleazy part of town and
is strung out on drugs. Ulee is not in touch with either one of them and
doesn't want to be. He simply closes the book on people to protect
himself from the pain that caring may bring with it. It makes for a lonely
and unhappy man who would never admit to being either.

       The plot that ensues is engrossing and emotionally satisfying. When
Ulee has to get involved with his family's problems he reluctantly does,
though his lack of warmth might keep him from being able to really help
if it weren't for the assistance of a neighbor, a nurse played by
Patricia Richardson (of Home Improvement tv series), who has the warmth a= nd
compassion to help the girls and their mother and even to make Ulee, in the
end, begin to come back to life.

     This is a really good film. Go see it at the Brandon 20 plex, the o= nly
place it's playing in Tampa at the moment.

    For the Women's Show, this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film.